Martin BendicoOn March 27, the University of Alberta Board of Governors (BoG) approved the revised Recruitment Policy, which eliminated all references to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) principles. EDI has been a staple policy in public and private institutions worldwide, expressing the commitment to anti-discrimination and the eradication of systemic barriers that impair members of socially vulnerable groups. The decision to repeal EDI language from its hiring policy is just one new chapter in the university’s shift away from EDI and toward a new acronym: access, community, and belonging (ACB).
In January 2025, the university rebranded its Office of the Vice-Provost of EDI to ACB, becoming the first university in Canada to erase its EDI office. Along with this change, U of A President and Vice-chancellor Bill Flanagan published an op-ed in the Edmonton Journal stating that EDI language has become polarizing, divisive, ideological, and “at odds with merit.” He justified its substitution to ACB as a move towards an academic environment “where ideas are exchanged freely, differences are valued, and every voice matters.” Understanding this as a political scenario of reactionary backlash against social justice is the only way to think about the anti-EDI movement. Flanagan’s language echoes this trend directly.
Moreover, we recently learned that artificial intelligence (AI) played a role in this transition. At a news conference, Flanagan declared that the choice for the ACB framework resulted from a process of consultation with the university community. It was from an AI-generated word cloud that university leadership selected three keywords — access, community, belonging — to form the new acronym ACB.
Despite the change being justified on the grounds of a public consultation, citing AI as the source of the new acronym erases the human choices behind them. Flanagan alluded to AI as a data-processing tool that chose the most referenced words from the consultation. However, the use of AI does not make the words legitimate or value-free.
ACB are not harmful terms on their own, but, as replacements for EDI, they erase the specific commitments to anti-racism, anti-discrimination, and structural change. While EDI explicitly challenged racism and other structural inequalities in its principles, ACB overlooks these issues and makes softer claims of universal belonging. This all started with BoG’s decision to remove EDI from the Recruitment Policy. Now, because of this, the university’s hiring process will look different. The university’s hiring committees no longer has to consider equity-seeking groups in shortlisting or interviews. Under the new framework, “community” and “belonging” appear as aspirational values, but lack the operational mandate to address systemic barriers in hiring.
In this scenario, AI serves the purpose of outsourcing the responsibility of dismantling EDI from university policies. When Flanagan presents AI as the machine that selected the preferable words, he justifies the decision for ACB as technical and neutral, a logical outcome of computational processing. Citing AI as a justification for a paradigm shift allows leadership to obscure the political decision made by BoG, with major implications for the future of university hiring.
Justifying the use of AI to campaign against EDI was the only functional use of the tool. Students deserve to know why the U of A is erasing EDI from its policies and why they’re removing explicit commitments to equity from its hiring practices. When the president claims AI as part of the solution, he adds confusion while claiming it as technical efficiency.
Without EDI language, hiring committees face no formal mandate to counter systemic bias. That affects who teaches you, who mentors you, and whether the university sees equity as a priority or an inconvenience. Technology should not be used to launder political decisions — and students should not accept neutrality as an excuse for retreat.
